Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank the witnesses for being present with us today.
It is a troubling fact that ArriveCAN has cost Canadians millions and millions of dollars while we're experiencing a cost of living crisis. Canadians, whether they're paying rent or just trying to pay their bills, are seeing things get more expensive. At the same time, it's troubling that their government, seemingly without care or oversight, is spending on expensive and extreme outsourced contracts. This is, I think, the crux of my concern, and one that I'll focus on in my questions to the witnesses.
We know, for example, from statements from the union representatives at the CBSA, that there is a double crisis happening right now. There's the crisis of the dramatic underfunding of our public service, which has created a vulnerability. CBSA has been forced, in some sense, to outsource, looking for the expertise they don't have.
The other problem is that when CBSA is given that longer leash, it seems as though things get way out of hand. We've seen multiple breaches of very, very basic levels of accounting and reporting, and, I'd argue, of basic ethics in disclosure of facts of when or how or if there was influence by private contractors and preferred access to private contractors, particularly when we look at the evidence that the Auditor General has found.
I want to look at the finding in paragraph 1.28 of the report:
The Canada Border Services Agency determined that it would need to rely on external resources to develop the web-based and mobile application because it did not have sufficient internal capacity with the skills needed.
We know that as early as 2006, there was a rapid increase in outsourced contracts by the Government of Canada. We can see it in, for example, the Phoenix pay system. The government gives a contract, and it gets out of control. These private contractors then endlessly bill the taxpayer for, in this case, even task authorizations that were not completed. Basic levels of trust, I think, were breached here.
In addition, we see in paragraph 1.29 that the Auditor General found the following:
We found that as time went on, the agency continued to rely heavily on external resources (Exhibit 1.2). Reduced reliance on external resources would have decreased the total cost of the application and enhanced value for money.
This is, I think, the most important piece to some of this workâto know that when they could have reassessed some of the task authorizations, even if the task authorizations had information relevant to what they were doing or who was doing it, there would have been an opportunity to reduce the overall cost of some of this work. You can look, for example, at that exhibit submitted by the Auditor General's office and at the tremendous cost this bears against the public.
I think it's now incredibly important that the checks and balances you mentioned at the outset of your testimony, Mr. Moor, aren't only listened to today in this committee but are also actually enforced.
I often find in this committee that we have officials like you. In this particular instance, we see a massive breach of public trust. In the attempt to rebuild that public trust, there are often words and recommendations put forward by the Auditor General. What I find troubling is that sometimes these recommendations don't fully meet their target or are not enforced.
That's troubling for me. I'll be requesting at the end of our meeting that we investigate follow-up opportunities from your appearance here and follow up on the enforcement of recommendations. The enforcement aspect is important to me, because it has to change. This just can't continue the way it has. I'm nervous that this could be going on in other ministries or even continuing in your ministry if we don't continue to see some of these checks and balances properly addressed and fully implemented.
It's true that we know that the CBSA, as you just mentioned, Mr. Moor, was approached by Public Services and Procurement Canada during the second contract, when they reviewed the first set of contracts and determined that they were insufficient for the purposes of being competitive, because of their non-competitive nature, and recommended a competitive process.
Is it the case that your letter that you just submitted, or that you admitted was signed in May of 2020, was your response to the initial inquiry by Public Services and Procurement Canada?